0.19 Civil war washington, the walt whitman archive, and some  (Page 11/12)

That Civil War Washington cannot be all-inclusive does not mean that it is destined for failure. I would argue that even the most encompassing editorial work is selective. Assuming one can imagine a useful—though not "complete"— Civil War Washington , what is the best way to sequence the partial building of it? And what is the relationship between the way a project might best develop intellectually and the most promising avenue to secure funding? I mentioned earlier that the Whitman Archive has been shaped by funding opportunities, and what has seemed most fundable are things that to the people reading the applications look more or less like what they're used to in the print scholarly edition—but with some of the added functionality of digital tools, including portability and search. So far the Whitman Archive has received a great deal of funding from four different federal agencies and a foundation. (We now even enjoy the highly unusual circumstance of having a permanent endowment to support ongoing editorial work.) In contrast, Civil War Washington has received no external funding. Of course the comparison is unfair; it is too early to say what the long-term grant prospects of Civil War Washington might be. In the interest of candor, I will say that we have applied twice for federal funding without success, but we have another four applications pending, and I remain hopeful about our prospects, especially with the sesquicentennial of the war rapidly approaching. It will be interesting, however, if we continue to have trouble getting funding given the centrality of our topic in U.S. history and the significant overlap of personnel between this project and the Whitman Archive . With the Whitman Archive we have the advantage of close kinship with a well-known form of scholarship (the monumental scholarly edition). Moreover we have a predecessor project we can invoke: New York University Press helped legitimize the field and left plenty of work incomplete or inadequately performed. With Civil War Washington , we are less obviously in an established tradition of scholarship, and we lack a direct predecessor project to improve upon. In comparison to the Whitman Archive , Civil War Washington may be more experimental and may have broader ramifications for humanistic study, and I hope it isn’t our fate to have a long struggle to gain financial support. External support provides a project key validation, helps the project’s standing in its local environment, and energizes the participants.

Beyond funding, other challenges face a project like Civil War Washington . Since this work emerges out of an academic context structured by disciplines, these include disciplinary difficulties. Those directing the project were trained as print scholars, solitary producers of articles and monographs, so we are having to learn to collaborate—a crucial skill, since this project presents demands that none of us could meet alone. We not only have to collaborate with fellow humanists, but also with technical experts—programmers, GIS experts, metadata specialists, and so on. The interdisciplinary team can be challenging to put together and to make work harmoniously, even in the best of circumstances.